Moving to Blender from 3ds max

Hey guys! Long story short - i’m tired of working in 3ds max and decided to try something new for me. I spent few weeks learning Modo, but i don’t feel that i really like it. And then i remembered how many times i heard/read that Blender have a really fast modeling workflow and powerfull customization capabilities, so i decided to give it a try. I was modeling in Blender once, like 5-6 years ago, and really liked it, but switched to 3dsmax since it was neccesary to find job in studios.

So i was wondering can you guys give some advices to quickly move to Blender? I don’t mean “teach me to master it from scratch”, it’s more about tips, workarounds, usefull scripts and addons, maybe even optimal shortcuts layout :). My speciality is game assets creation, so i don’t need anything related to animation or rendering. I even saw some special build of Blender which was made for game asset creation, but can’t remember how it’s called (something like Black Blender, dunno). I just want to get what makes Blender unique, and popular among people who aiming for fast modeling speed.

I hope i made my point clear, and i’m sorry if there are already threads like this (though i didn’t find any).
Cheers, Deen.

You want to know what makes Blender fast at modeling ?
From a max user to another, inside Blender, select an edge, now control + right click (assuming you set left click to select) somewhere else.

You may now start crying. :smiley:
Your edge modeling speed is about to increase by ten folds.

Oh and also you can extrude a vertex, you will get an edge without a need for face creation first.
This is a face modeling artist dream come true !
Topology first, fill the faces later.
I didn’t even know this is possible until I force myself to learn Blender because of the up coming EEVEE renderer that will take over the 3D world.

Welcome to Blender !

(PS: What you will be giving up is the transformation Gizmo in 3DSMax, even after having practised and achieved the muscle memory to move things in Blender using shortcut keys, you will still miss the visual intuitiveness of 3DS Max’s gizmo.)

I also stared in 3DsMax, what really works for me is the quick selections, © and (b) keys, for uv maps TexTools it’s making my work so much faster and easy, PBR node for cycles makes everything look fantastic. Pro Lighting skies , HDRI lighting in one click and im only using the free version of it.

Addons.

What unlocked my workflow was the introduction of roaoao’s Pie Menu Editor addon, which by the title alone is a huge discredit to its actual capabilities. It’s essentially a workflow enhancer that goes far and beyond pie menus.

Apart from the basic hotkeys for modeling, I’d say 80% of modeling, unwrapping and baking tasks are performed through my own created menus and macros made to accomodate a “full screen modeling” paradigm, which can’t be done natively by Blender unless you speak Python. I’m still not quite there yet because I create my workflow as I go, but I can tell my efficiency went into orbit after PME.

I have been working on a Blender tutorial series you can find in my sig that might help. I cover a lot of basic things, one by one.

OMG in my long reply I totally forgotten to post a video I have done about this very topic.

My gift to you:
3DS Max to Blender, first baby step, 2 min video:

At least you already know which way is up. :wink:

Thank you guys for advices and links! Watched Introduction to Blender by Richard, it helped a lot) And ty Bracer, nice vid, though i already get used to standart Blender navigation :slight_smile:

So now i’m feeling somehow confident using Blender, and thinking about buying Hard Ops.

You might be thinking of BForArtists: https://www.bforartists.de/

The main benefit for me coming from Max was Blenders built in sculpting, and gizmo-free manipulation (can take some getting used to). Blender also lets you view unfiltered textures in the viewport, unlike Max which broke that feature years ago when nitrous was introduced (which for low spec work really sucks).

Here are some of the more interesting/useful addons I’d also recommend checking out:

HardOps: https://gumroad.com/l/hardops
BoxCutter: https://gumroad.com/l/BoxCutter
Carver: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?400038-Carver
Asset Management: https://gumroad.com/l/asset_management
UVShotPacker: https://gumroad.com/l/UVShotPacker
Textools: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?443182-TexTools-for-Blender